In 2014, the company added its own mushroom compost yard, not far from the farm.
Layout of the farm, north of Adelaide.
company added its own mushroom compost facility, not far from the farm. “The compost yard gives us full independence from others, and really was the right move at the right moment”, says Nick Femia.
The compost yard consists of three open bunkers. A Traymaster turning machine and a bunker filler from the Christiaens Group are used to mix the pre-treated straw with chicken manure, and following a cycle of around three weeks, 100 tonnes of fresh compost is supplied to the farm each week.
Dutch casing soil
The compost produced in their own small tunnels next to the farm is filled using a Thilot filling line, pasteurised and spawned with the A15 variety from Sylvan on the Christiaens filling machine. In addition, each week half a growing room is filled with substrate inoculated with Sylvan’s brown variety - the S800. Of the 26
growing rooms, 24 are used for growing, while the remaining two rooms are used to cool and pack the harvested mushrooms before they travel to the market in Pooraka.
Each week, three growing rooms are filled, with a surface area totally 600 square metres. The growers apply an eight-week cropping cycle. After a good incubation period of 15 to 17 days, supplement in the form of AU Gold or alternately Champfood is added, and a day later, the beds are cased with Dutch casing soil supplied by BVB Euroveen. As Nick explains, there is no peat available in Australia so for years, on a nation- wide scale, Dutch casing soil has been used as this creates the very best quality mushrooms. Here too, the entire focus is on quality, although the yield of 34 kg/m2 spread over three flushes is not all that bad either!
After casing, the upper layer is levelled with a ruffler and cool down starts five days later. The aim is achieving the best possible spread so that
‘The majority of customers in the Australian market still prefer to stick to the traditional 4 kg box’
Christiaens Group hardware at the compost yard.
The compost produced in SA’s tunnels next to the farm is fi lled using a Thilot fi lling line.
MUSHROOM BUSINESS 9
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